Saturday, April 5, 2014

Just a trace bar lost in the north desert near Albuquerque. Summer thunder ozoned the air outside and stormfront wind out of the Sangre De Christos made the rat-ass bikes lined up in front shake on their kickstands and blew the trash around in the beds of pick-ups with tribal stickers peeling off rusted chrome bumpers.

Inside, the lightning of puke and heat and real bad whiskey. The kind that comes sweating out of you the next morning and smells like dead folks. Everclear on the juke and mad dog twenty twenty cooking in the blood.

He was on the third stool from the right, staring into his glass like he was watching a television show. I dropped in next to him. He had that long distance look you get when the booze has chopped all your strings away.

“Hey, Skip. What you doin’ this far away from San Antone?”

“Lookin’ for my starting pitcher,” I said. “Guess I found him.”

I motioned to the barman. He brought two drinks, sat them down, took my money and walked away without looking at either of us. Two hundred semi-drunk people jammed shoulder to sweaty shoulder and nobody’s seeing a thing. That kind of place.

“C’mon, kid,” I said. “Too noisy in here.”

He pushed back from the bar and followed me outside. We stood watching the rain slam down through the feeble neon of the beer signs in the fogged-over windows.

Distant fire flashed in the Sangres and the soft ta-thump reached us a second or so later.

“How’d you find me?”

“I didn’t. Mr. Van Zandt had your cell phone tracked.”

He laughed soft. It washed away in the rain noise.

“Leave it to the owner to find somebody don't want to be found,” he said.

“Somebody’s gotta keep track of the franchise, Tommy,” I said. “Take care of the team.”

“Take care of the money, you mean. That man don’t care a whit for the team. He—”

“That your blue truck over yonder?” I interrupted, showing him the gun.

“He don’t have anybody,” I said. “This is about the team, kid. Let’s go on over to your truck. Easier to talk that way.”

I kept the old, single-action Colt close on him while he got behind the wheel and I slid in on the passenger side.

“Why don’t we take a little drive into the Christos while we’re talkin’? Might be nice up there. Maybe we’ll get above the storm. Watch the lightnin’ hit the desert.”

He wheezed the beat-up old Chevy into life and we bumpty-thumped across the parking dirt and up the two lane blacktop toward the mountains.

“You don’t have to do this, Skipper,” he said, kind of sad-like. “It won’t make no difference, money-wise. I got the lifetime no-cut, no-trade contract, remember?”

“Yeah, that’s true, kid. That agent of yours.” I shook my head a little. “Pure pit bull, hell-on-wheels, he was. Said you were the second coming and the end of the world rolled into one. Said you threw hellfire and damnation. Got you that contract. Saddled the team forever with a rag-arm pitcher my three year-old grandbaby could hit outta the park. That money could buy us three brand new rookie arms and a third base and a couple of big bats. It’s gutting us. But with you, ah, gone, we could win. Maybe even get the division. Maybe even the Series—”

“Not what I meant, Skip," he said. “You’re the manager, you know that even if you...do this, Peggy will get the money. It’s right there in the contract. My only living relative. She gets it. All of it.”

Ahead, a yellow sign pointed to a flat, viewpoint pull-off. I pushed the barrel into his side.

“Turn here,” I said.

We rolled to a stop at the edge. Below us, the lightning spread across the clouds in billowing streaks of white light. The stars were out, bright and hard.

“You weren’t listening to me, Coach.” His fingers were white-knuckled on the steering wheel. “The team still won’t get that cash. You won’t. Peggy will get—”

I pushed the gun a little harder into his ribs.

“Tommy,” I said, “don’t you think Mr. Van Zandt knows that?”

He went sudden still and death quiet. His mouth formed shapes but no words came.

“She’s gone, son.” I sighed. “Opened the door smiling. Probably thought I’d found you. I got her a good one on the jaw and she went down and out. Never felt a thing. I used that bolo tie you like to wear. The one with the thousand dollar gold nugget for a slide. I left it on her throat. They’ll find her and think you done it.”

I patted him on the back and moved the gun to his temple.

“It’ll look like you were a good man who couldn’t live with what he’d done. At least people will remember that about you.”

I pulled the trigger at the same time he floored the old Chevy and we went flying off the cliff.

So, I’m laying here in the mud and it’s raining hard and cold and I can’t move because my back’s busted and something’s poked a hole through my chest and I’ve coughed out about a gallon of blood and there’s this cold white light circling my vision and it gets brighter and whiter and tighter and I can see the kid, with most of his head gone, hanging half out of the cab of the truck and I know they’ll find us both and figure out what happened and why and it’s darker and colder now and the white light is fading, pinpointing down to black and it feels like I’m falling into dark water and I think about the team I love and the game I love and wish I...

BIO: AJ Hayes is from San Diego and – god help him – good friends with Jimmy (Mad Dog) Callaway and Josh (Gut Ripper) Converse, who provide great advice and the occasional smack in the mouth with the butt of a .45.

Thursday, April 3, 2014

Father Conner got gunned down on the corner of 19th Street and Grand Avenue yesterday.

I knew it was coming and maybe I should have warned him.

But his small, sweaty hands had taught me years ago to keep my mouth shut, so I did.

BIO: AJ Hayes is from San Diego and – god help him – good friends with Jimmy (Mad Dog) Callaway and Josh (Gut Ripper) Converse, who provide great advice and the occasional smack in the mouth with the butt of a .45.

Tuesday, April 1, 2014

Once – when the world was just a little younger and more dewy-eyed – there was a boy. He was twelve years-old and lived in a white house, with blue railings and roof, in a sun-flooded neighborhood of pastel-painted houses and cinnamon-colored sunsets. His summer blonde hair hung down, in shaggy bangs, over blue eyes that seemed to hold every dream of every boy who ever lived. The scatter-smatter dusting of freckles across the bridge of his snubbed nose added random exclamation points to the blue of his eyes. All in all, he was the perfect boy.

Perfect – except, that he knew something that other people did not know and saw things that other people could not see.

He had not always known these things. He had not known them when he was younger. He had not known when he used to chase butterflies with his sister (herself a bright, poly-hued, soaring butterfly of a girl) across their oh-so-green front yard. Nor had he known when he went to bed at night, to dream of elves and knights and magic circles in the wild wood. Until, one night, he dreamed a very strange thing.

He dreamed he woke with a startle to something that felt like a bite from a crystal bee with a diamond stinger on his shoulder. He suddenly felt another sharp pain, a much larger pain – in a different place. He looked wildly around his room. His father was there, but his father looked different. His father’s eyes were not their usual blue. They were green, an emerald, glittering green with yellow starbursts in their depths. The pain made it difficult for him to see things exactly, but he thought that his father’s ears had grown longer, more pointed. His father’s hair had become glossy black and seemed to cover much more of him than the boy remembered. Then, the pain grew so large that it pulled him down into darkness.

As he had left the house to meet the school bus the next morning, something caught his eye – a gleaming, shiny spot on the porch railing. He crossed the porch to inspect it. It was a white shadow under the surface of the glossy blue paint – a vague, thin shape, slightly curved. It looks like a bone, he thought.

He had never noticed it before.

That night or the next night, he did not dream. But, on the third night, he felt the bite of the crystal bee again. This time he saw more clearly the green eyes and pointed ears and shaggy hair – the white, sharp teeth. A picture he had seen somewhere sprang into his mind. A wolf, green-eyed and glossy black. His father was a wolf. Pain blossomed through him again; too sharp to be a dream.

In the morning, he rushed from the house and straight to Mr. Malley, the crossing guard.

Mr. Malley, glowing in his yellow raincoat with red stripes, listened to the boy’s frantic babble, patiently. “Well now, lad. So your father is a wolf, is he? In your dreams? I think it’s too much candy after dinner we’re talkin’ about here.” He chuckled and offered the boy a mint. “And your daddy a doctor and all; he should be knowin’ better than anyone about that. There’s your bus,” he said, pointing across the street.

The bus was too crowded with children laughing and shrieking for the boy to ask the driver for help. His teacher listened to him after school, but offered much the same opinion as Mr. Malley had. He knew that his mother would not understand, either. She loved the wolf, whom she thought a man. No help from the grown-up world, he realized. He was on his own.

That afternoon, he noticed shadows under the bright white paint of the house – long, slender shadows, knobby at the ends. He knew what they were. Bones – carefully concealed by the wolf, unseeable – unless you knew they were there.

The boy’s world shrank. He no longer flew kites, played marbles or any of the other things he had done before. He spent every afternoon in the library, reading about wolves. He read about real wolves, mythical wolves and fairytale wolves. He read every book he could find on them.

He learned wolves are clever and good at concealing themselves; and that the ones with green eyes and black fur and white, sharp teeth are the cleverest of all. He read of the many methods adults and children had used to outwit or kill other wolves. But there were no stories of defeated emerald-eyed wolves. Emerald-eyed wolves always won and usually those stories ended, “So, the wolf ate them all up!”

The afternoons passed in wolf study. At night, the dreams – and the pain – continued. The boy, though despairing, remained resolute – somehow, he would find a way to stop the green-eyed beast in the house of bones.

In his desolation, there was only one bright place. After the library, he would return home and his butterfly sister would greet him. Her laughter and squeals of delight, as they chased birds, made faces out of the clouds and played hide and seek, made him almost forget – almost not see the shadows of the bones under the paint of the house.

Then, one night, the dreams stopped. A week passed, then a month and then a year with no dreams (though he still felt the bite of the crystal bee almost every night). The boy wondered why and began to look for the reason. He pretended to sleep deeply. Sometimes when he did that, the crystal bee did not bite him. When the bee did not sink its diamond stinger into his flesh, he saw clearly. He prowled the house, listening, watching – and sensing the bones beneath the surface of the walls. Late one night, he heard it – the reason the dreams had stopped.

From the butterfly’s room came a murmured cry – like twigs breaking from dead trees in a winter chill – and the low growl of the wolf.

It doesn’t want me anymore, he thought, it wants her.

He raced to the door of his mother’s room, pounding on it, hurting his hand. She appeared in her doorway, swaying. Her eyes were funny looking. On her shoulder he saw a mark he recognized, the mark of a fresh bee bite. He shook her frantically, yelling into her ear. He saw understanding creep into her dulled eyes.

His mother ran from him, to the door of the butterfly’s room. Throwing it open, she stood in the entrance. Saved, the boy thought, saved.

“You!” she screamed. “You promised! Never again, you said. No more girls. I’M the only one. You promised me. I’M the one. You need ME! Because you love ME! Is that why you made me have this little whore? So she could be your next? You bastard!

There was a snarl and a sound like a softball makes when it slams into a catcher’s mitt, a loud, hard, smacking of leather into leather. His mother fell to the floor, crying in a voice like the dusty rustle of leaves blowing in a bleak wind on an icy sidewalk. “You...promised.”

The wolf stood in the doorway, growling. Its eyes, shining with deep-sea phosphorescence, found the boy. It turned to a corner of the hall and opened a black satchel standing there. It came towards the boy with something glittering in its hand. It growled a warning and the boy stood still, feeling the bee bite his thigh. The familiar darkness took him. But, before it swept him down, he felt a fierce joy. In its red rage, the beast had made a mistake.

The boy knew where the creature kept the crystal bees.

A single word sprang into his mind. A word that all wolves fear – even the emerald-eyed ones. His grin as the darkness took him down was a feral one.

He had a plan.

The next morning, he opened his bedroom door to find that the wolf had dropped all pretenses. The house glowed white, bare of illusion. The floor was made of overlapping bones as were the hallways and the railings. The stairs glowed with the soft ivory and white of bones. Wrist bones, small and delicate, supported tabletops made of rib bones, curving with a polished grace. The walls were thighbones, hard and strong, reaching for the ceiling, which was made of shoulder blades. The stairs were footbones and knucklebones, inlayed with backbones rising for banisters. Everywhere the hard gleaming white of skeletal purity reflected the morning light. His breath steamed in the chill.

Downstairs, at the table, the wolf sat – its eyes following the boy as he descended the bleached gleam of the stairway. When, stepping slowly and cautiously, he had reached the table, the Wolf growled softly. Its luminous eyes swept over the leaf - tumble figure of his mother in the corner of the room. Turning its muzzle, the wolf moved its emerald stare lingeringly over the gray moth that the butterfly had become. The beast growled again, low. The boy knew the meaning of that growl: “Tell and I will kill.”

The boy missed his school bus on purpose. He watched from where he hid in the thick branches of the hedge as it disappeared around the corner. His hand made a small waving motion that might have meant goodbye.

His father, leaving for work, in a light gray suit and tie, never saw him. His mother, when she rustled by on her way to the store with his sister – held hard by the hand – did not see him either. As their station wagon passed his hiding place he looked through the car window at the gray moth. Soon, he thought, you’ll be a butterfly again.

When the automobile vanished, he hurried into the house. Straight up the stairs – the knucklebones making a cracking sound under his rushing feet – to the satchel in the corner. He fumbled open the clasp and reached inside. There! He felt the brittle crystal hardness of the bees. Carefully, he removed four of them from their nest in the worn leather satchel.

He raced back down the stairs, the chill of the house seeping into his body, and opened the refrigerator. There! Slabs of meat glistened in their wrapper. The wolf’s was, naturally, the biggest. (Blood rare, the wolf always said, blood rare.) Quickly and carefully, he opened the wrapper and inserted the shining stingers of the bees into the redness of the meat. His thumb thrust the plungers down one by one and the fluid within the body of the bees flowed into the supper of the wolf. Another trip upstairs and the empty bees were replaced in the satchel. Nodding with satisfaction, he left the house and used the side door to enter the garage.

In the cool darkness, he found what he sought – a rounded dome, bright red and pungent. When he picked it up, it made a soft sloshing sound. He carried it to the yard and hid its oily metal symmetry behind one of the rosebushes near the front door. The large red and pink flowers, heavily sweet, masked the sharp odor of the can nicely. Now, he thought, waiting is all I have to do.

At dinner that evening, the wolf tore at the dripping meat, snarling softly, mopping the juices with a thick slice of bread. The boy watched closely. Only when the last of the glistening red moisture had crossed the wolf’s lips did he relax.

Later, he lay in his bed, ears reaching out in the silence for sound. Wolfsteps approached his door and the knob turned. He held his breath, terror stricken – the plan had not worked. The door opened and phosphorus eyes met his. Fear frozen, he watched as the wolf approached him, its teeth gleaming whitely. It growled, bloodlust in its eyes, then fell with a great thump to the floor, its mouth open and teeth shining, green eyes closed.

The boy ran down the footbone stairway and into the yard, returning with the sharp-smelling can. He splashed the liquid within it over the floor and the walls and the thighbones and the wristbones and the ribcages and the knucklebones. Down the hallways of glowing ivory, he splashed, and over the backbone doorways, until the can dropped empty from his hands.

He ran to the butterfly’s room, sweeping her from her bed. He raced to his mother’s room and roused her from her bee-bite sleep. Down the knobbiness of the stairway and out the cold curving doorway to the lawn, they ran. He turned and tossed a kitchen match inside the house.

Even green-eyed wolves fear fire, he thought.

Red and orange waves of salvation crashed up the wall and over the ceilings and doorways as the bones flamed, painting a different kind of color on the neighborhood.

He heard the wolf howl. His mother, startled out of her diamond stung haze, screamed, “John!”

She screamed again, raced toward the house and disappeared into the brightness within the doorway. He heard, or he thought he heard, her scream again as the flames took her. He thought she cried, “Only ME!” The house erupted into an ocean of orange as the bones took fire and exploded.

In his arms, the gray moth wakened. Her blank, bee-bitten eyes turned to the house and reflected the flames in a whirl of color – like the wings of a butterfly.

BIO: AJ Hayes is from San Diego and – god help him – good friends with Jimmy (Mad Dog) Callaway and Josh (Gut Ripper) Converse, who provide great advice and the occasional smack in the mouth with the butt of a .45.

Friday, March 28, 2014

Tecate Divide gets cold in December. The Mexican side of the border at night is all sage and rocks and the mountain wind cuts like surgical steel. I turn the heel of my left boot on a tie and damn near go butt over breakfast. A red hot railroad spike of pain punches a hole through my guts. I grab air, catch my balance and put one foot in front of the other. The gleam of steel rails and roadbed stretches in front of me like a thousand miles of midnight. Fuckin’ Mexico, I think. It had to be fuckin’ Mexico.

*

“Hey, Gomez,” Carter yelled through the jukebox noise. “C’mere.”

I eased back my bar stool and shouldered through the crowd. The San Pedro sun blasted through the streaks of grease on the windows and cut yellow bars on the floor, light, dark, light, dark.

“How the fuck many times I got to tell you I’m no Messican,” I say. “My name’s O’Connor.”

His fat face cuts into the wrinkles he calls smiling. I think it just makes him look old—which he is, but when boss-man calls, you move. Or you get dead.

“Can’t prove it by me,” he says. “You look more Mex than Mick to me.” He leans in close and I can smell the garlic grease in his armpits. “Got a job for you. You remember Mojo? Little guy with a burn face scar?”

I nod. “Yeah, sure.”

“He needs to be gone, know what I mean? Gone.”

“Okay,” I say.

“’s why I picked you for the job, Gomez . He’s in Tecate. You know Tecate, south of San Diego? Heard he’s tending bar in a joint down there. The Tecate Club on the square. You know it?”

“Sure,” I say, “When?”

“Tonight. Comes on shift at eight.”

“On my way,” I say.

“That’s my Messican,” he says.

I parked my old Ford in a dark shadow side street a block south of the border fence and walked the two blocks to the old wood door of the Tecate Club. The smells from the square hit me like a ton of shit. Took me back.

*

I’m not being entirely straight with people when I say I’m Irish. My father was Irish, but my mother was Mexican. He was a sailor. She was a whore. Mom never saw her sailor man after their one-nighter. But, being a proper Catholic whore, she couldn’t get rid of the baby—me—because she figured God would have no problem with whores, Mary Magdalene and all that stuff, but she damn well knew he’d burn her ass in Hell forever if she aborted a baby. So, she raised me as best she could. Took me to street fairs on the square, parades on Cinco de Mayo and all that other stuff they do down south. She even took me to a couple of bullfights. For years after that I dreamed of being a bull fighter. Well, for a couple of years I dreamed of that.

And then one day, when I was thirteen, I came home and found my mother beaten to death. She was cut up so bad I had to wash the blood from her face to make sure it was her. The neighbors told me in whispers that it was her pimp that killed her. So I found him at the Tecate Club and, with a single stroke of a machete, took his head off at the shoulders and lit out for the border. I got lucky and made it to Long Beach and then San Pedro. I hooked up with a couple of crews. Made some dough and honed my natural talent.

*

I slipped the door open and looked inside. A few men drinking alone and some couples in the high backed, hundred-year-old dark oak booths doing nice things to each other in the shadows. Mojo was on a tall stool at the far corner of the bar staring at the counter top. He never saw me until I slid onto the stool next to him. I leaned in close, staring into his eyes.

“How ya doin’, Moj?” I said.

He tensed and I felt the move coming, his right hand sliding slow off the bar top. I grabbed it hard and shook my head slightly, still looking deep into his dark brown eyes.

“Nah, Moj. Too late for that.”

I smiled a little and brought the steel up and in. He didn’t try to yell. Wouldn’t have done him any good anyhow, since I’d made sure to cut his diaphragm. Watching, I saw the panic fill his eyes and he wobbled a little. Like always I kept my eyes locked with his. Saw a little hope glimmer in them but when the tip of the steel touched the bottom of his heart, that glimmer left and was replaced, like always, by a flood of light that burned brighter when the rest of the blade followed. It never failed, that light. I’d seen it in all twenty-two pairs of eyes I’d looked into over the years. I’d always wondered what they saw, those guys, when the blade did its job, what they were looking at, what they heard.

“I am the matador,” I whispered and let him gently down on the bar top.

I put the knife away, pushed slow away from the bar, walked across the room and out the door. The commotion and crowd spilling out onto the street yelling and pointing didn’t happen until I was in the Ford and headed for the border. Smooth, I thought, real smooth. I thought that—until I saw what I’d forgotten: A barred gate and a sign that read BORDER CLOSED FROM 8:00 PM UNTIL 8:00 AM.

Winter hours, I thought. Born in this lousy shit hole and I’d forgot fucking winter hours!

I spun the wheel hard and jumped the center divide, figuring I could bust the entry gate going the wrong way. I didn’t see the car parked there until I was almost on it. Just a flash of green and white. I had time to stab the brake and crank the wheel hard left, so I only hit the fucker a glancing blow that spun him around and stalled the engine in the Ford. “Shit,” I yelled, “horse-fucking-shit!” I twisted the key, yanked the shifter fast into reverse and smoked the tires backing up.

That’s when the Federale, who up ’til then had been peacefully dozing his shift away, jumped out of the car and blew a gaping hole in my windshield with his single-action .44.

“¡Alto!” he yelled and pumped another round through what was left of the shattered glass.

“Fuck you!” I screamed at him, scrabbled my .45 out of the shoulder holster and punched two fat rounds into his face. He stood, swaying a moment then fell.

“Take that, cocksucker!” I yelled and pounded the butt of my pistol on the roof of the Ford. “Take that!”

That’s when the Federale’s partner, who had, evidently, been sleeping in the back seat, jumped out and started blasting away at me with some kind of heavy caliber motherfucker. I swung the Colt around and nailed him, but not before the bastard put one straight through my belly button.

The round slammed me back into the front seat of the car. Which fit right in with my plan. I slapped the shifter, spun the wheel and got the fuck out of there: the hole in my guts soaking my pants with blood, screaming the Ford, speedo pegged at one-hundred-thirty-five fucking MPH, up the wide-open, pitch-black, asshole of Mexican Highway Number 2.

I ditched the car at the 80 kilometer sign and cut cross country until I hit the old railroad tracks. I figured I could follow the rails until I was close enough to the two-wire border fence and the small mountain town of Potrero. Not much of a town but there was a pay phone that I could use to call for a ride. Home free, I thought. Piece of cake. Went down smooth.

*

Somewhere along the way, it started snowing. I don’t remember when. I’m too concerned with the right foot, left foot, right foot slogging that’s moving me along. The blood soaking through my pants and down my legs felt warm at first, but now it’s ice. I got both hands holding my belly now, but it doesn't seem to help stop the steady drip, drip, drip of blood. Right foot, left, right, left. Oddly, I’m not cold anymore. It’s quiet up here. Just the wind. And me. And something up ahead. Light. Bright light and a kind of murmuring noise. For a moment I think maybe it’s a train. I mean, I’m on the tracks, right? But the trains on the Mexican side haven’t run for years. I keep walking. Right, left, right... I’m closer to that light now. And the noise. I figure out the noise first. Voices, a lot of voices. A big swelling sound, ¡Ole! ¡Ole! ¡Ole! they’re saying. And the light is the sun. Bright golden sun streaming down on the yellow sand of the bull ring and the crowds. It’s brighter now and louder. ¡Ole! ¡Ole! ¡Ole! Mexico.

I am the Matador.

BIO: AJ Hayes is from San Diego and -- god help him -- good friends with Jimmy (Mad Dog) Callaway, who provides great advice and the occasional smack in the mouth with the butt of a .45.

As many of you know, we all lost a great friend and outstanding writer recently when Bill "AJ" Hayes passed away unexpectedly. Bill was a true friend in every sense of the word, being supportive of fellow writers (especially this one), willing to talk shop and give advice whenever it was needed. Bill extended himself beyond just the writing, being a voice of reason and a stabilizing force in various people's lives. Though I never met him in the flesh, I felt like we were pretty good friends, closer than most, not as close as I would have liked.

ATON will be recognizing Bill Hayes' talent by re-running over the course of the next couple weeks just a small portion of what this great man put out into the world.

The sounds of the new day silenced, as if she had been sealed in a coffin.
No birds, no traffic, nothing. Just silence. Then the pounding of her heart and
her quickening breath invaded her ears from the inside. She sat up, and he
trickled out of her, wetting the sheets.

Images from the previous night flooded her mind. Pleasure. Passion...and
fear. She could feel his hands grasping her hair, holding her face close as he
said, “If anyone finds out about this, it’s over.”

She had known him forever, it seemed, but in reality it had been less than
a year. Theirs has been one of those connections, indescribable. Close. Fast
friends. When it turned more, she fell hard. He had told her how he married
after the army. But even with a wife and a three-year-old son, his need for her
remained, and hers for him. Although she had tried to keep things platonic, she
had been unable to resist when he had pushed toward seduction.

Life had damaged him, but then it hadn’t left her unscathed either. The
scars on her arms and legs, self-inflicted, spoke to that. But she nor anyone
but another soldier could grasp the depth of his internal injuries. As former
sniper who had served in Iraq, he struggled with normal life. She could see the
pain behind his eyes because it mirrored her own. Although she hadn’t known him
before, she sensed the war had changed him. Still, they understood each other’s
insanities. Both broken. Both scrambling to survive in a world they didn’t
understand, and more importantly, one that didn’t understand them.

A buzzing pulled her out of her thoughts, and she looked over at her phone
vibrating on the night stand, a reminder of an unread text from her best
friend.

He must have seen it.

That’s how he knew she had told. She must have slept through the first
alert, dreaming. Content in her satisfaction. His senses, honed from his
experience overseas, enabled him to hear the quiet vibration in the night.

Now he knew. Now it was over.

She collapsed to the floor, holding herself in a fetal position. The fear
that consumed her wouldn’t even allow tears to come. Gasping for breath, she
tried to grasp this new reality.

He was gone. It was over. Surely he couldn’t throw their love away so
easily. But the fear of hurting his family mixed with the unstable nature of
PTSD made him unpredictable. She had seen it, his personality change from
charming and witty one moment to dark and brooding and harsh the next. She had
often wondered if he was reliving something from the war, remembering things
that he quickly pushed back down deep inside the darkness of his mind. Despite
horrors of war, tragedy and loss and savagery beyond comprehension, his greatest
fear now was losing his family. He would stop at nothing to protect his place
with them. He would never talk of them. She had asked repeatedly to see a
picture of his wife, hoping that seeing her as a person, instead of just a
intangible concept, would help her resist him. She would not do anything to hurt
him or his family, but he always made an excuse. Perhaps his fear of losing
them, of being discovered, had turned dangerous and triggered something primal
inside him.

A new horror came to mind.

What if he meant over over. Like, over for her. Completely, not just the
relationship?

“Get up,” her subconscious screamed at her.

But she couldn’t move.

“Get up! Get up!” The words burst from her mouth and echoed against the
walls in the silent apartment.

Forcing herself to her feet, her instinct took over. Naked and alone, she
ran to the front door and turned the two deadbolts, locked the doorknob, and
shoved a chair beneath the handle. She stepped back, pulling her hands to her
mouth, and trembled. Listening. But the silence remained. The whole world quiet,
save for the pounding of her heart and her ever-quickening breath.

Her mind drifted back to a few weeks ago. She could still see him watching
her with admiration. No, adoration. The heat in his eyes had startled her. No
one had looked at her like that in quite some time, and she had thought she
imagined it. An artist, like her, they had gone to an opening together. An
excuse to see each other, of course, in a professional setting without
suspicion, although there had been nothing to suspect at the time. They had just
been colleagues, friends, supporting each other in a tough business. Keeping
each other’s spirits up so that they could continue to create. But his wife was
the jealous type. Older than he, on her third marriage, a scientist with little
interest in the visual arts.

That night everything had changed. She had felt him watching her, and she
didn’t quite know what to think. They had embraced, as always, but this time he
kissed her. Just on the cheek. Rather innocent, really; but she had felt
something new in that moment. For her, anyway. The look on his face as they
parted made it clear that he had been taken with her for some time, and that
night he had made his move, subtle as it was.

A door slammed in the hall, making her jump then realize she stood alone,
naked and scared. Lost in her memories. Had she been more aware, could she have
seen the danger that lay just beneath his surface?

Voices drifted through her closed door. She stared at the chair forced
beneath the handle and listened.

“Why are you so grumpy this morning?” It was Mr. White, her neighbor.

“As if you didn’t know. I hardly slept with all that screaming and pounding
last night.”

They must be on their way to church.

“Ah, to be young again,” he responded, his voice fading as they moved down
the hall.

Then again, silence. Deafening, the kind that muffles every sense. The kind
that fills the entire room with dread.

She still trembled, but the goosebumps on her flesh awakened her to the
cold.

“You’re overreacting.” Her voice broke the silence. “Get a grip.”

Leaving the chair propped under the door, she returned to the bedroom and
began gathering her clothes strewn about the room. She picked up the purple
panties and the matching bra, bought especially for him, his favorite color, and
slid them on, remembering how he had coaxed them off last night. The soft fabric
of her favorite sweatshirt dried her cheeks as she pulled it over her head, its
folds warming her body and comforting her. She stepped into her PJ bottoms and
slid her feet into her fuzzy slippers.

The phone on the nightstand buzzed again, causing the adrenaline to rush to
her brain. She picked up the phone to turn it off, but dropped it. Its face
cracked as it hit the side of the nightstand before crashing to the floor.
Frantic, she looked around then ran toward the window. After she jerked the
curtains closed, she pressed herself against the wall next to it. Her pounding
heart filled her ears, and she could see it moving the material of her thick
sweatshirt. Her breath came faster and more shallow. She slid down the wall and
hugged her knees, trying to consciously slow her breath. Breath in,
one-two-three-four, and out, one-two-three-four. In, one-two-three-four, and
out, one-two-three-four.

It wasn’t helping.

She crawled along the floor, fighting to breathe, toward the bathroom.
Grasping the edge of the sink, she pulled herself up and reached for her bottle
of Xanax. After gulping one of the tiny pills down with a handful of water, she
took comfort in the fact that the attack would soon pass. Her face in the mirror
seemed old, tired. She turned the shower knob to hot, knowing the hot water
would calm her until the pills kicked in. It always did, but as the room steamed
up she saw it again. I warned you written on the glass shower door. Screaming,
she wiped the words off then dashed around the apartment, jerking the curtains
closed over the windows and ensuring all the lights were off. Although, that
didn’t matter in the daylight. Her thoughts bounced around in her head,
obsessive and frantic.

She rushed into the kitchen, opened the silverware drawer, and pulled out
the biggest knife. Then she resumed her position on the floor, in a corner, with
her knees pulled close. She kept her wide eyes trained on the front door and
waited. It’s not enough, her brain screamed at her. You haven’t done enough.
Pile boxes in front of the windows! Call the police, for Christ’s sake!

“The Police,” she said aloud. “Fuck!”

Clutching the knife in one hand and forcing herself to take deep,
controlled breaths, she crawled back into the bedroom to her shattered phone.
She pushed the home button and saw the familiar picture pop up. Thank God! It
still worked! She slid the arrow to unlock it and pressed the green phone
button. Dr. Ray’s name filled the top three slots of her recent call list.

She pressed the top one.

“Hello,” the tired voice on the other end said.

“Dr. Ray?”

“Yes?”

“Sorry to wake you. It’s Marla.”

Following a heavy sigh, he said, “Yes, Marla. How can I help you?”

“I’m in danger!” she managed between rapid breaths.

“Calm down. Are you doing your breathing exercises?”

“Yes, but they’re not working! He’s coming! He’s coming for me!”

“You are having a panic attack again. Keep taking deep breaths. Try a hot
shower until it passes. That always seems to help, right?”

“No! You don’t understand! On the shower--” But her pleas went unheard on
the dropped call.

“Fucking AT&T!” she shrieked and hurled the phone across the room,
hitting the far wall and denting the sheetrock. There goes the security
deposit.

“Deep breaths. Deep breaths.” She rocked back and forth, covering her head
with her arms. The knife rested against her back. God! The Xanax should kick in
soon. I’ll be fine. I’ll be just fine. In, one-two-three-four, and out,
one-two-three-four. In, one-two-three-four, and out one-two-three-four.

Dr. Ray was probably right; an anxiety attack had caused the paranoia
because she already felt better. How ridiculous for her to be so freaked.

“I mean really, Marla? He’s just trying to scare you. Abusive SOB.”

She was definitely overreacting.

“Just do what you would normally do in the morning. No need to freak
out.”

She laughed at herself as she made her coffee, and soon percolating sounds
and delicious, fresh aroma of brewed java filled the room. Her eyelids drooped a
little as she poured her first cup. The Xanax kicked into full gear. She felt
relaxed and rather tired. It had been a long, exciting night after all. Was it
really over? She couldn’t fathom never seeing him again, watching him smile,
making her laugh, kissing those soft lips. But the comfortable chemical-induced
calm allowed her momentary peace.

“Don’t jump to any conclusions, Marla.” Talking to herself often soothed
her, allowing the thoughts to come out rather than bounce around in her brain
driving her crazier. “I’m sure everything is fine. Just be glad he didn’t see
that level of crazy. Don’t panic. Not yet. No need to panic yet.”

She sipped her coffee again and moved over to the large, living room
window. At first, she just parted the curtains a sliver, peeking through them
into the morning. It had snowed during the night, and a beautiful white blanket
covered everything. It was Sunday, so many cars were still on the streets as all
their owners slept in. Only a few tire treads marred the otherwise pristine
white. It was a perfect morning.

“I love Xanax,” she sighed.

After sliding the curtains all the way open to let in the sunshine, she
settled down on the sofa, pulled her lap blanket over her legs, and gazed out
the window. Across the street some children were up playing in the snow. They
had already formed the bottom of a snowman and were working together to roll the
middle. A blue bird settled on a tree limb just outside. He held a worm in his
beak. A car turned the corner and slid a little, but regained control before
hitting the curb. On the top of the adjacent building, a glint caught her eye,
like sun reflecting off glass.

He waddled. That was the only way she could think to describe Roger’s
movements through the world. Like a giant, well-fattened penguin. He’d been like
that ever since he’d pulled his back out at the Ford dealership, tossing tires
around the parts warehouse. Two workman’s comp surgeries later, he seemed more
messed up than he had the day they’d sent him to the first quack.

Now he’d put on another fifty-odd pounds, quit working at all – even quit
lifting the axe to chop firewood for winter. First year, he’s spent some of his
unemployment money on hiring the neighbor’s boy. This year, he didn’t have that
or a job, so she’d done it.

Marge finished the stack with a throbbing in her back and shoulders. Even
dragging around the baby, who was a butterball of a kid, was less
work.

He came outside, caught her cooling off with one of his Miller Lites. “What
the hell you doin’, bitch?”

She polished off the can, set it on the stump and whacked it flat with the
back of the axe head. “Drinkin’ my beer.”

He looked like he wanted to hit her. He’d slapped a few times in the past
few years, especially since he’d stopped working. Instead, he waddled back
inside.

She heaved the axe handle up on her shoulder and cocked a hip. “Damn
straight.”

The baby turned three in a week. All she’d ever wanted and the only thing
she’d needed him for. When he’d been born, they’d lived in a nice apartment in
town. Small, but one with heat. And a working stove. She’d found out five hours
after the Csection that Roger’s insurance only covered fifteen percent of the
surgery.

“It covered it all if you’d been able to do it on your own.” The nurse
clucked her tongue. Same one who’d suggested she was too old to be a decent
mother anyway, tried to scare her with birth defect stories while she was still
heaving away in labor. That was how they’d ended up in the trailer just outside
of town. The one with the wood stove in the yard and the drafts where the floor
boards had rotted out.

He’d never hurt her while she was pregnant. Hadn’t much more than called
her names, jerked her around some before. He’d been big and strong, but he
hadn’t used it against her too much. Not like her exhusband, the one who’d never
been able to give her a baby, even after fifteen years of trying.

She stayed for little Jack. Boys needed a father. And, after years of
looking, she’d found one. Maybe not the best in the world, but probably the best
she’d find in the county. And she’d run out of time.

Marge sat at the table she’d found by the road near the Kirby’s farm. Cheap
vinyl top with cigarette burns, but it fit in the kitchen and held a couple of
plates.

Roger’s butt stuck out of the fridge.

She munched her cheap cereal, bottom of the shelf corn flakes that came in
a bag.

“Whatcho lookin’ for?”

“We outa beer?” He emerged, holding up a carton of orange juice. “We can’t
be buying this expensive food, woman.”

“We’re eligible for aid, still. The baby”

“We ain’t a welfare family.” He slammed the fridge door shut. “We buy what
we can afford. Like real Americans. Not them socialist scum.”

“You sound like Jimmy Ray.”

“You leave him outa this.”

“Sure, so we can’t afford juice, but we can buy beer, right?”

“Least the beer’s American. You don’t even know where this shit come from.
Prob’ly Mexico or somewhere. You want fancy people food, you better get a fancy
people job.” He left the OJ on the counter and stormed off, probably to sit
around Jimmy Ray’s bar watching the TV until dark.

Marge finished her cereal and put the juice away. She had a job. Worked
nights at the gas station at the edge of town. It came with a uniform so no one
wondered why none of her clothes didn’t fit right after the baby. It was walking
distance away since he’d gotten the car repossessed. And it was at night when he
and the baby were sleeping so neither of them could aggravate or hurt the other
one.

“Fancy people jobs” was what he called the ones people wore suits to, the
ones that required fancy degrees and rich parents. Even then there weren’t that
many of them in town.

About three lawyers to handle all the wills and taxes and DUIs at the
county courthouse. And even then, one of them was half-dead.

Old guy had been stacking up paperwork in that home office of his since she
was a baby. Bout two doctors not counting the dentist. One handled the old folks
and one handled the kids. The insurance agent next to the diner and the pastor
were the only others in town who owned a tie. Wasn’t even the kind of place
people wore fancy clothes to church.

She fantasized about what it would be like, sitting at a desk with a
computer and a phone. No shotgun under the counter. No video camera watching her
like a common thief. She smiled at Jack. “One day maybe you’ll have a fancy job,
huh, my little man?”

The grocery store sat a quarter mile from the gas station and opened an
hour after she got off her shift. Small, with fixtures as old as she was, the
prices weren’t much better than the gas station, but the selection was better
and without a car to get out to the WalMart on the edge of the next town, it was
the best she could do. Shopping days always left her exhausted and Roger cranky
because he had to feed Jack.

Hamburger meat on sale. Dollar off a pound if she bought the stuff so
marbled with fat it nearly started a grease fire to cook it. Bacon cheaper than
eggs. She picked up a sack of potatoes and a loaf of white bread, the kind that
looked like bleached paper, even after she’d toasted it. Roger’s favorite, of
course. Last, but not least, a fridge pack of Miller Lites, that she cradled to
her on the walk home, the half dozen plastic bags digging into her wrist and
hand.

She worried about the healthiness of their food. Worried little Jack would
get diabetes, that one of them wouldn’t live long enough to see him graduate
high school. She’d seen all the various reports on the news that played on the
small TV behind the counter at work. She’d heard Dr. Oz in the afternoons when
folding laundry.

Roger always told her that was a bunch of sissyass bologna. That those
people just wanted her money. His daddy had been a meat and potatoes man and his
daddy before that.

‘Course, both Roger’s parents were dead as were her own.

“Now this is what I’m talking about!” He shoveled runny eggs and
near-expired bacon in his mouth with a fork while mopping up the yolk with a
greasy biscuit in his other hand.

“Don’t talk with your mouth full.” She sipped cold tomato soup from a
glass. Cheaper than the vegetable drinks, which were cheaper still than actual
produce.

“That veggie crap’s gonna kill you.” He waved a floppy piece of bacon at
her, the thin line of meat barely noticeable for the thick vein of fat. Grease
flew off the end of it and splattered the side of her glass.

She cut off a corner of egg white. “One of us has to be around long enough
to raise Jack.”

“You gon’ raise him up to be a pussy with all that healthy eating junk. He
gon’ be softer’n a pillow. A pillow biter.”

She got up to rinse her plate. “Or as soft as your midsection.”

“What’d you say, woman?” He jumped out of his seat, fork still in his fist
as he brought it down on her shoulder, the rounded edge of the handle jabbing
the muscle.

The plate jumped out of her hand and shattered on the scarred
linoleum.

“Look what you made me do. Can’t even enjoy my breakfast without you
breaking shit I worked hard to earn.” He shoveled the rest of his bread in his
face and stormed out the door.

Snow fell. Drifts piled up around the sides of the trailer. Marge wrestled
the frozen door open and stomped outside in her boots to build the morning fire.
While it got going, she went inside to lay out the eggs and sausage, put
everything on ceramic plates that wouldn’t stick to her gloves and got out the
heavy cast iron pan she used on the open flames. She remembered her daddy having
cast iron for camping when she was little, but she’d never known anyone her own
age to cook with it. Heard tale of some trendy city types buying it up, but
she’d never met one. Sounded like the same kind of fools who moved into
buildings with old pipes and crumbling bricks so they could fix ‘em up.

It’d been nearly a month of his new man diet. He’d put on another seven
pounds of beer gut and decided he no longer needed sleeves. Got too hot, he
said. Marge figured she’d only be too lucky if he’d managed to kill himself in
the cold and handed him another beer on her way out to cook.

He scratched himself on the couch and changed channels.

She felt the hatred burning in her heart, hotter than the old metal stove
in the yard. She felt the cold of her remaining love, wound so tight and small
it would fit in the tip of an icicle and have room to twirl around.

He belched. “Shut the door. You’ll get a draft goin’ in here. Damn,
bitch.”

She sat down to mend the hem of her uniform pants and felt the weariness of
three days running hard seep into her bones. She couldn’t remember the last time
she’d had more than a couple hours of sleep in any given day or night. If she
wasn’t at work and little Jack didn’t need her, she was cooking or cleaning or
running errands, hauling groceries the two miles back from town, chopping more
firewood, or lugging bales of laundry up to the Laundromat near the Hardees.And
speaking of Hardees, she could feel the burger she’d had for lunch coming back
up on her.

She’d wanted the salad. Even with the fried chicken on it, it seemed
healthier somehow than the fat slab of beef covered in orange cheese, but the
salad had cost four times as much and she’d just spent her last five getting
their clothes clean. In summer, she’d have just put them back in the garbage
back and taken them home wet, saved a few bucks hanging them outside, but spring
was still another week away, and that was by the calendar, not necessarily the
weather.She took a deep breath and stretched. Sipped her V8. Whacked at her
chest a few times like her daddy had done when he’d needed to cough up mucus or
tried to get down another rack of ribs. Went back to sewing.

The indigestion got worse, an uncomfortable tightening sensation like the
damn burger was growing arms and legs in there. She sat up straighter and
coughed, thinking it just needed to be loosened.

Roger came back in at five. He’d been out in the woods. Said he’d gone
hunting, and he’d taken his gun, but what he’d really needed to do was get away
from her incessant whining about losing weight and eating better. What he’d
really needed to do was get another sixpack in him so he didn’t have to hear
that baby up babbling and whining for his momma at night.

He leaned his rifle against the side of the trailer and shook his head.
Damn kid was already making a fuss. And weren’t they supposed to grow out of
that eventually? Seemed it’d been too long as it was. Damn mother of his had
turned the boy into a pussy. That’s all there was to it.

“Hey, ain’t you gon’ be late for work?” He nudged her foot with his. Damn
woman sleeping at the table like she had no place to be. Hadn’t even made him no
supper. No wonder the brat was yelling like a fool. Kid’s probably hungry.

Her head lolled to one side slightly, but stopped before it reached her
shoulder.

“Hey! Bitch! You lazy good for nothing…” He reached down and grabbed her
hand and stopped. The thing was cold, almost stiff. Normally, flinchy and hyper,
she didn’t move.

He backed away from her. “What the—?” Then he smiled, realized he didn’t
have to listen to her complaining no more. Realized he didn’t have to worry bout
her turning his boy into one of them faggots no more. Didn’t have to worry about
her wasting beer money on fancy shit.